Category: Uncategorized

I am curious about the tools to run a block chain barter economy. It needs to be natural. Barrier to entry has to be so low it’s almost non existent. It has to be overly convenient. It requires freaky simplicity. Have you used any?

Endurance is that drive that keeps you going. It’s grit. It helps you in the long haul. Success requires endurance. It requires hustle and persistence. However we need to be careful and not run others over with our persistence. We need to be aware of others and their needs. Our endurance need to be compassionate.… Continue reading Compassion in endurance

UX design is the attempt by a business to craft how a customer encounters every touch point with the organization. User experience design should occur from beginning to end not just within some app. User experience may start with the first encounter of the organization. How do they learn that your business exists? Next the… Continue reading What should user experience design be?

“If you pay attention to demographics and purchasing power…” If people paid attention product teams would do many things different. Most of the time it is simpler to hire people who are: In your own image In the Jones’ image Available Cheap In the know Maybe we should hire because: They demonstrate customer empathy They… Continue reading Tom Peters: the ideal 25-person product development team is: 15 WOMEN. 10 MEN. 10 AGE 50 PLUS.

Dan Ariely is a professor and a fabulous writer about behavioral economics. Multiple times he has written about an MIT study that demonstrates the psychology of the architecture of choice. I will tell the story in reverse. When selling the famous Economist they set up some experiments. When selling a web version only for $59… Continue reading Designing choice matters: triple your sales by adding one more choice

She tells you that it is our job to just tell the software engineers what to do and they will do it. And then she wonders why the user experience of the product is not what is expected when people are selected to work on projects because they have a pulse but no interest. Since… Continue reading Cognitive dissonance is when your boss tells you to stop looking for coworkers who have a passion for user experience.

You could hire designers to create that new thing. Or you could add these three things to your current process and do better. Observe your customers in action… Do not interview, observe Validate solutions and priorities with your customers.. do not just make it up Test what is being built at least every two weeks…… Continue reading 3 things your team can do to leap frog your competition

I struggle with doing the same thing for long periods of time. I prefer the new, the chaos, and the freshness of learning something new. Perhaps that is why I like product design. Recently I decided to try writing on a daily basis. This is difficult. The way I am approaching it is that it… Continue reading Discipline in discipline. Keeping organized, good use of time, maintaining the drum beat of a practice

Bill Cambell teaches executives: Pursue “operational excellence. Focus on the processes, prepare for all meetings: staff and one-on-one, hold people accountable and compensate well.” “Project humility. Show a selflessness, that projects that you care about the company and about the people. “Facilitate open honest communication. It is “better for arguments to be heated but honest… Continue reading 4 leadership lessons: pursue operational excellence, project humility, facilitate communication, streamline decisions

3 points Lisa deBettencourt (@ldbett) shared in her review of the MITX panel she was on. When large organizations stay to use customer knowledge to inform innovation they “face new problems of managing access and distribution of insights at scale.” “discovery, synthesis, and decision making process itself and can be distributed in real-time.” The best… Continue reading How can user research inform innovation?

I have been watching the interviews around professional sports. All teams have losses and some have streaks. This always frustrates fans and the media relishes the opportunity to ask about it. What I find interesting is that the response of the best teams seems to be the same across football, basketball, hockey, and soccer. Whether… Continue reading What do winners say when they fail?

Your product is long in the tooth and you have no idea what your customer wants. So it always seems like a good idea to sprinkle a little UX dust on the product and wallah! Wow! It is true that ensuring that the visuals of the product are current and modern will remove a barrier… Continue reading You know what your telling me when you say that your product needs the Wow factor?

Care, friendliness, goodwill, mercy, goodness and kindness are all attributes of ourselves. This week we need to take the opportunity to explore this at work. Recognize the people we work with and provide chesed (loving kindness). Here are some questions that the Meaningful Life Center asks (with changes to fit the work environment): What is… Continue reading Goodness and kindness at work

The best leaders hire talent not experience. When hiring make the distinction between traits and states. Traits are fixed and are what define a person States are changeable Detail oriented and introvert are traits where as knowledge and skills are states. People can improve their knowledge and skills but not their traits. Talent is a… Continue reading Looking for talent

Has anyone used the Headspace app. I read this article in Forbes: 3 Ways The U.S. Women’s Soccer Team Uses Mindfulness To Be At The Top Of Their Game. My daughter and I love watching the US women’s soccer team. These powerful women are great role models. This article talks about how just the physical… Continue reading Working in your headspace

How can you design a product for your customer if you do not know your customer, the business domain, and the technology you are building with? People do it all the time. How many technologists have the coolest latest thing that they are searching for a market and a user? How about the designer who… Continue reading Context is everything

Migraines can render me useless in a dark room with ice on my eyes. At first the lightening bolts appear in my eyes. Sections of my sight disappear which makes looking at my computer impossible. Then arrives the headaches and nausea. To reduce the effects and duration I do the following: 1000mg ibuprofen 1000mg acetaminophen… Continue reading Migraines … what I do

We have teams of people across several clients and location. Each team is embedded at the client site and fully focused on project work. Typically each person is engaged at the client level but may or may not feel connected to our company. There are several articles for telecommuting workers and only a handful around… Continue reading Employee engagement across distributed teams

As the UX designer sits around thinking of the gamification or ways to keep you engaged with your phone apps, did he care or have any concerns for the consequences? It’s insidious and nearly impossible to get away from. I turn off most of my notifications and am still harassed every few minutes by my… Continue reading Incessant evil of the electronic tether

It is a strange balancing act that social media companies have played. They want to grow as fast as possible and get as much money as possible. They have hid behind protecting free speech on their platforms. The only free speech they are protecting is their own. Social media companies can kick anyone off for… Continue reading Once you log in, you have no freedom of speech. Social media is private, not government.

Creativity Innovation This Forbes article is lazy. They had a good headline then quit. Great. CEOs want creativity and innovation. Deming and Ford are an interesting historical footnote. What are CEOs really looking for? The writer explains that innovation is what they want. “New ways of looking at people and processes are the best ways… Continue reading Over 77% Of CEOs Are Looking For …

How ridiculous is it that the clothes were not even made for women This year Nike is making uniforms that fit women. Maybe the men should wear those new Nike women’s jerseys for the next 28yrs.

There are many kinds of designers lumped into UX designers. There are visual designers, information architects, website designers, consumer app designers, usability engineers, interaction designers, UI designers, human factors engineers, user researchers, and I am sure that I could come up with more. The point is that there are different flavors and emphasis around different… Continue reading Hiring a UX designer for a technical enterprise company

Whether you are a startup or a long time business, why do you think the next product you build they will buy? You build it… they will come? We spend more time worrying about the tools and processes we have then the needs of our customers. What other investments do you make where you spend… Continue reading How do you know that your customer will buy what you are making?